Scout InsurTech Spotlight with Dominique Roudaut

Dominique Roudaut is Senior Executive Vice President, Head of Innovation lab at Dai-ichi Life Holdings, Inc., one of Japan’s largest life insurance holding companies, providing life, health, and annuity insurance products to individuals and groups both in Japan and abroad. 

Dominique also served as a Chief Underwriting Officer and Strategy and Innovation officer across P&C before delving into L&H. Dominique was interviewed by Michael Fiedel, Co-Founder at Scout InsurTech and Co-Founder at PolicyFly, Inc.

Dominique, how do you see the role of underwriting evolving in shaping the future of insurance?

“I would start with the fact that underwriting is an analytical job. It’s about analyzing both risks and opportunities. Sometimes underwriters are seen as too conservative, too quick to say no. But the real challenge is finding a way to say yes, while balancing risk and opportunity.

Second, underwriting today is much less transactional and far more portfolio-driven. An underwriter has to care about everything that impacts the P&L; top line, bottom line, and everything in between. That requires different tools. If we only think about underwriting as case-by-case activity, it can be repetitive. But if we go beyond that, it becomes more of a Promethean venture where we learn from our portfolio and share that knowledge across underwriters to empower better decisions.

That’s why I believe underwriters should design their own tools. Fifteen years ago I did this with a nimble company that later grew quite large. I wanted to analyze my portfolio across every configuration, geography, and distribution channel with a few clicks. What once took three days of manual work could be done instantly, and we rolled it out to 20 countries in a year. If I had gone through IT, it would have taken a year just to write the RFP. Underwriters need to be hands-on in designing the tools they use.

Finally, if we are to act as portfolio pilots, we need clean data. And the more we rely on data and AI, the more governance becomes essential. We must be confident we can explain every decision. So to me, the future of underwriting is less about being a proficient case underwriter, even though that still matters, and more about becoming an adept portfolio pilot, with strong grounding in governance and legal matters that affect our ability to trade and distribute.”

What opportunities exist for underwriters to expand their impact beyond traditional risk assessment?

“The first task is to gain leeway. If I’m busy all day long quoting or in meetings, there’s no space to do more. So the first thing is to find margins of time to improve the portfolio and do additional work. That’s how we bring back entrepreneurship to underwriting.

Today, there are many tools that can help, such as underwriting workbenches, tools to extract and summarize information from broker submissions. By streamlining this work, we free time to run the business instead of reacting to every request and detail.

With that time, we can integrate data across silos. Once my portfolio was heavily hit with large losses, and I needed to understand what was happening. I pulled every large loss file from the claims department for the past three years across 20 countries. With the right tools, that kind of review can be done with three clicks. It doesn’t have to be a major project.

Once you can do that, you can move into predictive analytics by product and by line of business, in life and health, as well as P&C. That leads to better decisions. And for the most advanced underwriters, it means moving closer to risk management, thinking about prevention and mitigation instead of only risk transfer. How can I help my insured improve their risk profile? That not only benefits them but also improves my P&L. That’s where we start nudging behaviors and controlling frequency and severity in a much more proactive way.”

In your view, what makes collaboration with startups and new technologies essential for the future of underwriting?

“In one word, differentiation. We all use the same vendors, so there’s no differentiation there. The real opportunity is in working with startups to co-design something of value.

Differentiation comes in three forms. First, optimization, which means making processes more efficient across the insurance value chain, from sales and distribution to underwriting, operations, claims, and AI governance. Second, innovation, which focuses on being more relevant, not just more efficient. This is where underwriters can start to act more like risk managers in commercial lines and anthropologists in consumer lines. Third, risk analytics, which involves providing services that help better manage risks (and collect data) and moving from underwriting to profiling. Profiling considers lifestyle and behavior, especially in life and health, and goes beyond traditional underwriting information.

But there’s a word of caution. Actuarial science is a science of mistakes. If we take business decisions purely from spreadsheets, we may get it wrong. We need to understand the models we use, and never lose sight of basic common sense. With more data and AI, that’s even more important, because we may get results we don’t understand.”

Think of it like a plane. Planes can fly themselves, but we still want a pilot at the controls who understands aerodynamics and thrust. The same applies to underwriting. Technology and AI are powerful, but we still need a good brain behind them. Startups provide great tech and agility, but underwriters must use it purposefully, not just because it’s there.”

What bold moves do insurers need to consider today to remain relevant in a world facing systemic challenges?

“Systemic risks are by definition difficult to insure because they are too big, too well known, and too correlated. Climate change is an existential issue for P&C. Liability is growing with endless litigation around PFAs, microplastics, and more. Cyber risk continues to expand with more connectivity and attack surfaces. In life and health, we face aging populations.

If insurers rely only on the pricing lever by chasing profitable business and leaving the rest, the protection gap will widen, and someone else will fill it. That is an existential threat to the industry.

We need to think less like underwriters and more like risk managers or anthropologists. We must understand what policyholders are really trying to achieve, the jobs they need done. For example, I’ve designed cyber products for SMEs and consumers that were not only cheaper but more valuable because they included prevention services. By nudging behavior and improving risk profiles, we improved loss ratios by design. The alternative of raising premiums, cutting benefits, or shrinking coverage only leads to a smaller market and we are less relevant in it.

The same applies across other lines. In health, we can help people manage chronic conditions so they survive longer, healthier and claims are delayed or less severe. In property, how can we help policyholders make buildings more fireproof, windproof, or flood resistant? 

In short, the bold move is to stop thinking only in terms of risk transfer. We need to help policyholders manage risk proactively, which in turn improves our own performance. That’s how insurers can stay both profitable and relevant in a world facing systemic challenges.”

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